February 03, 2005 - Over the years, there has been no shortage of films about the boogeyman. Some directly referred to their villain, and others, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, merely made allusions to it. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Candyman and Jeepers Creepers, along with countless others, all feature a boogeyman of sorts. While I liked some of those previously mentioned films, and others not so much, one thing each had was a slightly original slant on the boogeyman legend.

Enter Boogeyman. Directed by Stephen Kay (Get Carter, The Last Time I Committed Suicide), the film is the second release from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's production company after last year's surprise success, The Grudge. 7th Heaven's Barry Watson stars as Tim Jensen. As a boy, little Timmy saw a traumatic event in which the boogeyman came out of the closet and took away his father. Picking up on Tim's life years later, he has been through years of therapy and made to understand that his dad simply left and that the boogeyman theory was merely an invention of his child self's mind to deal with the pain. Tim lives his life in constant paranoia, still unable to open a closet without freaking out. He's forced to return to the house he grew up in after his mother's death, where he must once and for all confront the events of his past and figure out whether the boogeyman is real or if he's just lost his mind.

For what it's worth, The Boogeyman is a better film than the laughably bad The Grudge. Still, that film made a ton of dough, so if this film, which appears to have been done for a pretty low budget, makes even half that, I'm sure this will be considered another success for Ghost House. What this film doesn't have is any bit of the originality that make Sam Raimi's work so original. Raimi has said in interviews that he doesn't like to interfere with directors on the films he produces, but Boogeyman is another clear case where Raimi's touch could have only helped bland direction.

	-Screen Gems Watson and Deschanel in Boogeyman

It's not that Kay is a poor director. The film is confident and slick. It's well put together and looks good. The music is pretty creepy at times, stirring some relatively cheep scares all on its own. On the flip side, Boogeyman is totally vacant and generic. There's nothing new here. It's painfully obvious where the story is going right from the get-go, and it travels that path in predictable fashion. The preceding journey is just plain boring. It also makes very little sense and, without giving anything away, the ending has so many plot holes that it's hard not to shake your head and wonder why things weren't at least tied up more securely.

Barry Watson is a solid actor and he's engaging to watch here, you just wish you were watching him do something more interesting. Even he looks kinda bored at a point. How many times can we watch a guy timidly open a closet and still care? The music rises, creepy things happen, and sometimes there's something there. We've seen this all too many times, and we've seen it done better. The strongest points of the story are some more psychological bits, but this is never explored too deeply as Kay succumbs to the temptation to just do the typical "booo" bits. The supporting cast, Tim's girlfriend Jessica (Tory Mussett) and his childhood crush Kate (Emily Deschanel) serve little purpose other than to pat Tim on the head and tell him to get help, look sexy and get killed. I won't say which does which.

Boogeyman is not a terrible film, but it's not a good one either. More daring direction might have elevated the film slightly, but the story itself doesn't offer a whole lot to work with. Horror has always been a genre that gets very little respect, but it's also one of the hardest genres in which to make a truly good film. Bad horror films make money, so they keep getting churned out. It's ironic though, that a terrific director like Raimi is now involved in bringing films to the screen that are merely bland imitations of his own groundbreaking work.

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